"Holy Grail" in clamshell land...found!

Well, partially anyway! Found after 9 years of searching, a NOS clamshell rubber weatherstripping (LH)

Made from Unobtainium, I never thought it would show up..but it did.

I will find out if any of the rubbercompanies would be interested in repro..I'll scan it 3D, and print a mold.

Maybe some poured rubber is good enough to start a repro project..

 

I don't suppose the same place has old Ford parts...

 

I was thinking Art, that you could maybe sell that clamshell weatherstrip for more than the price of some clamshell wagons themselves.....

 

Krash, could not stop laughing...you're probably right!

 

I fart in your general direction........


find me some for any of mine will ya?...

 

Any luck with getting a company to reproduce these?


Brandon

 

NOS you lucky SOB! Thats gotta be THE needle in the haystack!

 

Rev, I'm glad I was done with my coffee, or I'd be blowing it out of my nose...

 

Forgive me if I sound naïve, but there must be many companies that would be able to manufacture weatherstrip like this. A quick google search turns up many companies that do rubber extrusion. One such site is minorrubber.com. Why not ask a few of these companies for a quote to take an NOS piece like this, make a mold, and run off 40 or 50 pieces? Can it really be that expensive? Has anyone tried to go down this route? Just trying to help!

 

I think the problem is no one can find an original piece in good enough condition to call companies and have them use it as a mold. There was talk of a company called Karr Rubber, but I haven't been able to get them to answer the phone.


Brandon

 

If Art did have it scanned then he should be able to create an .STL file from that. From there you can produce an SLA master and use that to make a temporary mold to produce some prototypes. The only difficulty might be the overall size of the pieces and material restrictions based on the process and trying to get something as soft as the original seal. Is the seal one big piece for the entire rear or is it separate pieces?

 

when i redoing my wagon i needed the rear quarter window gaskets. i found a guy who could make them . he told me he just made a clamshell window gasket was $1800 . i told him thanks but no thanks i only paid $2500 for the whole car

 

and that is why you won't find any companies willing to make a run of those bits...

the small time guys can do it just fine and charge WAY more for it...and they make money that way.

the big corporations look at it, well, if we start making these things, their value goes WAY down, and we might get $189 for a single piece and $349 for a set but we have to create molds and this and that and they don't think they'll make money.

what these big companies don't realize is that for every dipstick who emails them saying "OMG why don't yuo make rubber for my car" there are a half dozen other people subscribed to a thread about it who wish they could buy rubber for their car, and another fifty people who own that same model who would LOVE to buy new rubbers, and each of those people can contact a few more and say, "hey man, didn't your brother in law have one of them cars with the fins and the chrome and the big block and didn't he need to change out some dried up rubber on that thar door?" and then you've got a bunch of people buying...

at least that's how it works in my head...

 

I'd like to keep this going, surely we can find something.